Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Song of Drar and Murin: Game 3

With the figures I am planning to paint this weekend in the flocking tray drying, I decided to play another game of SODAM; Murin and Drar paid the ultimate price for my decision.

For this scenario I wanted to try out the Leadership trait of the Goblin commander. The dwarves start at the centre of the board and must exit via any of the three ends to win. The Goblin commander is randomised to one of the three immediate tiles, and may "activate" a card if he enters a tile.

The set-up.

The deployment. With the dwarves protected/blocked by a wall, I decide to head left and avoid the Goblin commander.

The measuring template from Litko makes an appearance.

Murin faces off the Goblin commander while the rest make off to the left. The Goblin commander decides against a confrontation and calls for more troops instead.

Things are looking good... but it won't for long...

The Goblin commander closes in. Drar is beset by two goblin warriors and Murin decides to come to his rescue.

Murin charges in and orders Drar and the archers to retreat... but Drar is cut down while trying to break off contact!

While Murin is stunned by his friend's death, the Goblin commander falls upon him and slays him too!

The rest of the dwarves lose heart and flee pell-mell, and one more archer will fall at the hands of the Goblin commander before the battle ends.

With a figure with the Leader trait on the goblin side, they become much deadlier. The dwarves were a little unlucky this game - the Goblin commander made 3 activations to charge at Murin and make a Powerful strike, and then rolled high enough to kill him.

I guess my question now is whether I should continue the campaign with the surviving dwarves and hopefully gain another leader figure by winning a game, or whether I should play the next games from the point of view of the goblins instead.

Really sad to see the 2 main men (dwarfs) go down in the same advanture.

If this were hollywood, we would witness a young protagonist shouting "NOOOOooooooooooooooo............" and attenpt a suicidal charge into the green hordes - before being restrained by his older party members and led to safety.

Some years later this (now grown up) warrior would lead a band in a classic revenge scenario.